What You Just Might Have to Look Forward to if You're Not Good

Try something for me. It'll make this just a teensy bit more understandable for you. Close your eyes and try not to move your eyeballs or twitch your lids even just the teensiest tiniest little bit at all. For a whole minute. Think you did good? Now try it for a whole day. Think you're still doing good? Now imagine putting the barb from one of those really annoying plants that gets caught on you clothes and takes froever to pick out under your eyelid so that if you actually DO move your eyeball just the minutest amount or wiggle your eyelid ever-so-slightly, you'll feel it. And it'll hurt like hell. I mean, those little fuckers have prickles all over them and their fucking little barbs get caught in everything.

K, but you're not done yet. Now, put that barb-y planty thingy in there, then add a light-sensitive dimension to the pain - every time you look at light, or every time the intensity of light changes - say the sun goes behind a cloud or someone turns off a light down the hall, or your neighbor's motion sensor light flips on and off every time the wind blows that god-damned tree branch in front of it? any time something like that happens, the barb gets squished in your eye. Like, someone huge shoves their fist in your eye and holds it there for 15 or 20 seconds.

Now, the day this first occurs, add an emergency room visit, with fucking brilliant fluorescent lights and constant flashes and inconsiderate arrogant assholes opening and closing flimsy curtains designed to keep nothing out and constant loud noises (which attract your attention and FORCE your eyes to move...really, try it) and only a dentist's chair to sit in.

Stay in that emergency room for a minimum of 7 hours, until 4 in the morning, ensuring that you WILL NOT get a good night's sleep.

For fun, throw in a nurse's warning that the numbing drops they've been pouring profusely into your eyes for the past 7 hours (causing burning and stinging sensations just before your eye goes mindlessly numb and your head begins to spin from some weird side effect) WILL MELT YOUR CORNEA if you use them too much. But not tell you how the fuck too much is too much, of course, and you KNOW she has no idea how many medical students and residents and attendings and specialists and opthamologists and janitors have come in and dumped some of the shit in your eye in the last 5 hours. So now you've got a nagging worry in the back of your mind. Just a little one. After all, you have one good eye.

Now stay in bed for two days, unable to read, unable to watch TV (cause THAT fucking hurts) unable to have conversations (you'd be shocked that you can't just keep your damned eyeball still while you talk), unable to pee because you can't find your way to the bathroom, unable to eat because the food can't find it's own damn way to your mouth, unable to cry because it hurts like a bitch.

Then have the brilliant 83 year old opthamologist tell you he's not happy with the way your special little 3-yr old's finger hole in your eye is healing, and have him SHOVE gauze in your eye (which, PS, hurts), tape it on your face with approximately 67 pieces of surgical tape (which isn't SUPPOSED to come off), in what he calls a "pressure patch." Now stay like that for another day. Peel the tape off, because you're NOT ALLOWED to just leave it on there until the stickiness just fades away, you've got to peel it out of your eyebrows and sideburn fuzz. Because that's what hell is.

And here is the reason why you need to eat your vegetables and mind your manners and not chase girls and be nice to animals and clean up your room and not waste your food and all those other things that your Momma always told you you should do. Because this could be just one of the many versions of hell that you may have to look forward to in your afterlife. And believe me, you don't want it.